I returned to the Lower East Side to see some summer art shows. It’s not a hard and fast rule, but summer exhibitions tend to be group shows with loose themes that feature colorful, sellable work. Here’s what I liked walking around in the heatwave.
ESTEFANIA VÊLEZ RODRIGUEZ: Rodriguez uses pigment on canvas and linen, but to say that she’s just a painter does her a disservice. The works in this exhibition range in size from 14 x 11 in to 48 sq. in. The largest offers a lot of art for the price ($8800), but the small works with their mixed media including sand, glitter, and ceramic stand out. They look like candied confections at first but, on closer inspection, reveal layers of form and color that make them sculptural. At $1550 and $1750 for the smallest, these seem like obvious (and joyful) options.
→ Visit: Marc Straus (Lower East Side) • 299 Grand St • Tue-Sun 11a-6p, through 08/08
ANDREW LEVENTIS: This exhibition, Wildflowers, epitomizes summer shows: a small, straightforward series of floral paintings from various artists. Sometimes it’s nice just to enjoy the art for its own sake. Leventis’s two photorealist paintings — one of a vase reflected in an ornate mirror, the other a bird’s eye view of a memento mori bouquet past its freshest days — are easy to look at, but are far from simplistic. They can be enjoyed for their technique, but have more meaning just below the surface. $4500 for each 30 x 24 in. painting.
→ Visit: Massey Klein (Lower East Side) • 124 Forsyth St • Wed-Sat 12p-5p, through 08/02.
OLUSEYE: Nigerian-Canadian artist OLUSEYE’s addition to Hannah Traore’s Who? Me? exhibition is a weighty, canny approach to the theme of self-portraiture. A pair of handcuffs propped upright on a heavy concrete pedestal holds a photo in each of the manacle loops. Are they the artist’s parents, or descendants, or merely found photographs collected during travels? Regardless, the work is beautiful despite, or perhaps because of, the heaviness — literal and figurative — of the materials. The sculpture is $6850, and inclusive of its base. –Charlie Davidson
→ Visit: Hannah Traore (Lower East Side) • 150 Orchard St • Tue-Sat 11a-6p, through 07/26.